have a better pedigree than a prize-winning poodle. I’m curious, though-as a member of the master race, does this Zionist masquerade sicken you, or amuse you?”
A sneer, this time, no question. “This farce sickens me.”
The nine-millimeter in my fist remained trained on him.
“And please, as our little talk progresses, Doc, let me save you some time-spare me about how you weren’t really a Nazi, you were a man of science, caught up in winds of political change not of your choosing. Serving science and mankind, as best you could, under unfortunate circumstances. Hating Hitler, much as you now love Uncle Sam. One word of that shit and I just fucking shoot you-clear?”
Now, finally, a little fear was melting the icy eyes; he swallowed thickly. “You’re a very sick man.”
“Well, why don’t we pretend I’m on your couch and you can have a listen to my crazy story. And it’s a crazy story, all right. Seems some Nazi scientists were working on a project at White Sands involving a flying-saucer-like vehicle. Actually, it was shaped more like a wedge, and I’m just piecing this together, but I understand, during the war, you Germans were trying to build a saucer-shaped bomber, that could lift off vertically, since all your runways were shot to shit; and this project grew from that wartime research. Now somehow, at White Sands, for some reason, Japanese engineers and pilots were also involved …”
Bernstein’s mask slipped; my mention of the Japanese startled him. He clearly didn’t expect me to have such esoteric information.
“… possibly because their knowledge, combined with their small stature, made them ideal pilots. And, since Uncle Sam is willing to collaborate with Nazis, why not with Nips? Fair’s fair, isn’t it? Anyway, there was a crash, maybe the craft got struck by lightning; seems to have been a midair explosion, over the Brazel ranch, scattering some debris, with the vehicle crashing, or crash-landing, some miles away.”
Those eyes of his didn’t blink much-the icy-gray eyes fixed on me like a cobra looking at a mouse; it would have been unsettling, if I hadn’t had the gun.
I went on with my tale: “Colonel Blanchard and his boys found the craft with the crew mostly dead, with maybe one left alive. In the darkness of the night, some of the witnesses apparently took the craft for one of those new-fangled flying saucers they’d been hearing and reading so much about-the Japanese crew, in their silver flight suits, maybe with their heads shaved, maybe with swelling around their eyes … traumatic hematoma can cause that … must have looked pretty damn strange. Like little men from outer space, in the dark, next to their ‘flying saucer.’ How do you like my story so far?”
“Delusions like these, Mr. Heller, can get a man committed.”
“I’ll bet. You could probably even arrange a little shock therapy, huh, Doc? Now some of the witnesses knew they weren’t looking at spacemen, recognizing a Jap when they saw one, puffy eyes or not … and some of the fringe players didn’t really see much at all-Major Marcel just found some weird debris, that p.r. guy Haut just issued the press release as ordered, Maria’s mortician sweetie just had some phone calls for small caskets, then got the bum’s rush when he dropped by the base hospital. Maria here was the one who ‘saw’ the autopsies and the weird corpses. That’s where the black propaganda campaign kicks in.”
Bernstein shifted in his chair, but knew enough not to unfold his hands. “Mr. Heller, if this were true, it would be classified material, top-secret information, and a wise man would walk away-right now. I might be willing to forget this intrusion … even including you threatening me with a gun.”
“Well, that crashed aircraft does represent a threat of exposure of top-secret technology, all right; but that wasn’t the big worry. The upper echelons of our great democracy-for example, an advisory panel called Majestic Twelve, including one James Vincent Forrestal-shrewedly deduced that the public’s reaction to the government collaborating with both Nazis and Japs would have been a public relations disaster. Nazi scientists retooling V-2s, Japs test-piloting U.S. experimental aircraft-this stuff doesn’t go over big with families that haven’t gotten over, yet, losing sons and fathers at Bataan and the Bulge.”
His lips pursed in a smile as he pretended to be amused. “So now, Mr. Heller, you’re suggesting the federal government concocted the ‘flying saucer’ hysteria themselves, to cover up testing of experimental aircraft?”
“That I don’t know. The saucer hysteria may have been a natural by-product of a nation exiting a catastrophic world war, and needing something new to be afraid of. Maybe the government fueled that hysteria for its own purposes; I just don’t know. But I do know, with so much talk of flying saucers in the air-so to speak-it provided the perfect cover-up for the Roswell crash.”
An invisible eyebrow arched. “Paranoid schizophrenics, Mr. Heller, see conspiracies everywhere they look. Tell me, have you been hearing voices?”
“Actually, I have: yours. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself, Doc. You see, the brilliance of this cover-up is that it substitutes a fake cover-up for a real one … leading people to believe that what the government is trying to hide is evidence of flying saucers and outer-space men. You feed, and feed off, the rumors that a flying saucer crashed in the desert; this plays into the witnesses who didn’t see much, or didn’t see anything, and probably a handful-perhaps Kaufmann-who misidentified the Japs as Martians or whatever. Still others, who saw the Japanese pilots and knew damn well what they were seeing, were warned and threatened into silence. Some of those who saw too much-Sheriff Wilcox, Mac Brazel, again maybe Kaufmann-were taken to the Walker base ‘guesthouse,’ and this is where you come in, Doc-and you, Maria.”
The mention of her name made Maria visibly uncomfortable.
Bernstein’s expression took on an air of patronizing disgust. “I’ve never been in Roswell in my life.”
“You were there last month, Doc,” I said. “But we’ll get to that. You, or somebody like you, managed that guesthouse, where-using a combination of drugs, hypnosis and what-have-you-you manipulated real memories into false ones. You worked your mind-control magic on them, Doc, the flying-saucer scenario being similar enough to their real memories to take hold. A few players like Maria, here, are meanwhile injected into the mix, disseminating disinformation, and lending credence and richness to those false memories various witnesses are ‘remembering.’”
Bernstein nodded toward Maria, curtly. “If Nurse Selff was an active player in this ridiculous ‘disinformation scenario’ of yours, what was she doing still working as a nurse at the Walker base, almost two years later?”
Maria smiled a little, her expression challenging me to get it right.
I shrugged. “Maintenance. Keeping an eye on the witnesses. Making sure your experimental methods had taken root and held, Doc, and keeping an eye out for anyone-like me-who might come snooping around. That’s my guess, anyway. Or maybe she’s just a nurse who occasionally gets pulled in on intelligence jobs. Care to enlighten me, Maria?”
Her expression suddenly rather sullen, Maria shook her head.
“Hey, well I’m doing pretty well on my own, wouldn’t you say, Doc?”
“I’d say you’re delusional; almost certainly a paranoid schizophrenic.”
“Sorry to hear that-that’s what Forrestal had, and look how he ended up.”
“You might want to keep that in mind.”
I gave him the most awful grin I had in me as I kept the gun trained on him. “Good for you, Doc. Getting cute like that’s the first step, in coming out from behind your mask. Where was I? Ah-the other brilliant thing about the saucer cover-up is that the witnesses-and their tampered-with memories-will fall into the lunatic fringe, and any reporters who cover the story-like Pearson-will look like saps. I mean, I’ve figured out what’s going on, but I still can’t be sure who’s a disinformation disseminator, and who’s a mind-controlled witness. Can’t tell the players without a scorecard, but then, of course, in the end it doesn’t matter.”
Bernstein’s voice was both soothing and condescending as he said, “A symptom of your illness, Mr. Heller, is the inability to differentiate between speculative fantasy and hard reality. In short, fascinating as this may be, it is as preposterous as, well, flying saucers … and there’s nothing here you can prove, and if there were, who would you prove it to?”
“I’ve proved it to myself,” I said. “To my own satisfaction. The certainty is in my head and my gut. I have no doubt that you worked your sick magic on me. I left Roswell, having heard ridiculous stories about spacemen from all sorts of people, Maria included, yet came away with a strong conviction that what I’d heard was true! After my stay at the guesthouse, I believed in flying saucers, all right; I even had a sort of vision of a pale, benign spaceman, in my dreams, soothing me with his suction-cup fingertips. But then it finally occurred to me, Doc … I admit to being a little slow on the uptake, here … but outer space creatures don’t usually have German accents.”
Bernstein didn’t have anything to say to that-no perfect clipped English response at all.
Now Maria was looking Bernstein’s way, as she said, “Mr. Heller says that Forrestal was murdered.”
